On Friday morning I was lucky enough to be assistant surgeon in a terminal surgery thoracotomy prac class. In short: I Held a Living, Beating Heart! Oh my God you cannot believe the buzz that causes, or how sick of you people become when you mention that fact three times in five minutes.

I just cannot adequately explain the feeling you get when holding a beating heart. There are certain parts of animals that I feel represent their spirit, their essence of life. As such, those parts deserve a special kind of respect, particularly when you start to think of animals as being parts to approach systematically. The brain is one of them, but I tend to feel that the brain should never, ever see daylight. Eyes are another, full of mystery and meaning, and fascinating when you manage to look into the back of them at the retina.

But it is the heart which has a special significance for me. I know it’s traditionally associated with emotion and soul, but really it is little more than a pump with some wiring. But it’s still a powerful, emotive organ. Maybe it’s because it’s so central, and moves all by itself. And I got to touch a living, beating heart!

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Categories: Veterinary student
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I sometimes get the feeling that the people who run the horse wards at Uni think of horses as some kind of mini-gods. They certainly consider horses to be far above all other species that those other vets treat. So I find it quite  amusing to see non-horses in the sacred grounds of the horse wards, such as the calf that was mentioned previously.

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Categories: Livestock
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 There is a huge amount of pressure placed on cat owners to lock their felines up and stop them from breeding. We are constantly told about the thousands of cats and kittens put to sleep in shelters each year, and how cats damage our native wildlife populations. As a result, many councils in Australia have enforced mandatory desexing and banned cats being from being allowed outside.

The politicians that create that legislation then feel very good about themselves, thinking that they have solved the cat problem: cats won’t breed as much, population will decrease, less kitties in shelters, less damage to wildlife. They put all the responsibility onto the cat owners and avoid tackling the big half of the issue.

Australia has a domestic cat population which is on the decrease. 98.5% of female domestic cats have been spayed, which actually makes the remaining cat population unsustainable long term. We may well have desexed too many of our domestic cats. The cat problem we have, which is entirely unaddressed, is the feral population.

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Categories: Pets
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Reember to keep sending in those pet photos for the contest! There’s still $35 and 8000 Entrecard credits up for grabs.

Categories: Veterinary student
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 I had three autopsy prac classes over the last week and a bit. I have to say that they’re hard work, make a huge amount of mess and don’t end up looking like anything you might have imagined from watching some crime show on TV where dead humans are lying around.

We make a huge mess when doing an autopsy. It’s a bit like taking the dead animal, and pulling it apart into it’s separate components, as though it was made of lego. I realise the thought of such things disturbs some people, so there are no photos of the process for you. But I will tell you a bit about it if you’re still interested.

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Categories: Exams, Livestock, Other Science, Pets, Veterinary student
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